


your mortal every night

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2011-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:16:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Agha Shahid Ali's 'The Veiled Suite':</p><p> </p><p>  <i>I ask, “Can you promise me this much tonight:</i></p><p> </p><p><i>that when you divide what remains of this night</i><br/>it will be like a prophet once parted the sea.<br/>But no one must die! For however this night<br/>has been summoned, I, your mortal every night,<br/>must become your veil… and I must lift your veil<br/>when just one thing's left to consider: the night.”</p>
    </blockquote>





	your mortal every night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toujours_nigel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/gifts).



> Title from Agha Shahid Ali's 'The Veiled Suite':
> 
>  
> 
> _I ask, “Can you promise me this much tonight:_
> 
>  
> 
>  _that when you divide what remains of this night_  
>  it will be like a prophet once parted the sea.  
> But no one must die! For however this night  
> has been summoned, I, your mortal every night,  
> must become your veil… and I must lift your veil  
> when just one thing's left to consider: the night.”

It’s become a ritual, now, almost: waiting for Maan as he emerges from Tarbuz ka Bazaar, inebriated, drifting out of the foggy night in search of Firoz’s steadying arm. Saeeda Bai will not see him, so Maan settles instead for copious amounts of alcohol, ghazals shouted tunelessly into the night, and the always-available haven of Firoz’s bed.

Firoz dumps him on to the mattress on most nights, shoving him unceremoniously against the wall, slapping away Maan’s wandering hands when they search for him in the darkness.

‘You don’t want me,’ Maan observes one night, as though the thought has only just flickered to life inside his head.

‘Go to sleep, Maan.’

‘I can’t sleep. I’m a spurned lover. My frantically beating heart keeps me awake.’

Firoz snorts into his pillow. ‘Your frantically unsatisfied cock, more likely. Please desist from poking it into my backside tonight.’

He expects a cheerfully drunken comeback, but Maan remains curiously silent for a few minutes. Firoz rolls over with a sigh. ‘Maan?’

Maan’s on his back, his arm against the wall, fingertips tracing desultory patterns on the plaster. ‘The Rajkumar wants me, you know.’

‘Does he,’ Firoz says, suppressing a yawn, idly watching the movements of Maan’s fingers, listening to the sibilant sounds they make against the wall as Maan attempts some invisible, complicated, cursive gibberish.

‘Mm. He touched me.’ Maan lets his hand hover beside the wall, making a shadow-rabbit, as absorbed in his task as a child delighted with pretend-games.

‘He what?’ Drowsiness forgotten, Firoz props himself up on an elbow to look at Maan in the moonlight streaming in from the window.

‘The first night we went to Tarbuz ka Bazaar together.’ On the wall, the rabbit sways with giddy joy.

‘Maan. Maan, look at me. What did he do to you? Were you drunk?’

‘We were in the tonga. He did this.’ Maan’s hand, warm and sure, kills the rabbit and cups Firoz’s kneecap, moves gently up his thigh.

Firoz clamps his hand over Maan’s, stilling it, and Maan laughs. ‘And that’s what I did.’

He squeezes Firoz’s thigh, attempting to move his hand further up, but Firoz holds it fast. ‘Maan, no.’

‘Why not?’ Maan slides closer, nuzzling along Firoz’s throat. ‘Want you, Firoz. God, want you so much.’

Firoz says nothing, reaching up to clasp the nape of Maan’s neck to keep Maan from kissing him. It feels right, somehow, holding Maan by the hand and by the neck, trapping him against his body.

‘You’ve never said no to me before,’ Maan whispers, the words caressing Firoz’s lips.

‘Things were different before.’ Even as he makes his half-hearted protest, Firoz can sense himself weakening under the heat of Maan’s gaze, silver-dark in the half-light.

Maan begins peppering his face with tiny kisses, soft pleas punctuating the feather-light presses of his lips against Firoz’s skin. _Please, just this once, just tonight, please, don’t say no._

\--

It’s different in the light of day, or perhaps not. Firoz can’t quite tell who’s courting whom anymore. Maan complains incessantly about not being able to write Saeeda Bai love letters in Urdu, so Firoz agrees to continue the lessons Rasheed has started. They’re still on the alif, Maan’s quick mind and agile fingers apparently defeated, at long last, by a language.

‘Show me how,’ Maan says, reaching across the wooden desk to shove Firoz’s books aside. ‘Please, Firoz, I can’t do this without your help.’

‘This is like having a child around. Even Imtiaz was never this much of a nuisance,’ Firoz protests, but pushes his chair back nonetheless, going around to Maan’s side of the table. Maan beams, pushing his hand into Firoz’s as if it belongs there.

Giving in, Firoz holds Maan’s hand, guiding his strokes, helps him write out _Ye na thi hamari kismat_ (‘she’ll love this one, I know she will’) on a sheet of paper, secretly convinced that it will join all of Maan’s previous missives in Saeeda Bai’s waste paper basket.

By the time they’re done, Maan’s hand is under Firoz’s kurta, fingers charting invisible lines of want against his back, searching out his waistband and slipping beneath.

‘Maan,’ Firoz says, the word floundering somewhere between objection and encouragement. Maan’s arm is strong around his waist, his lips mapping out a jagged line of lust on Firoz’s stomach.

\--

Tired of Maan’s optimistic heartbrokenness, Firoz goes to see Saeeda Bai one day after he leaves the courts. He gives her an aadaab when he sees her, and she laughs as she shows him in, slipping into the rehearsed, immortal art of nakhra. ‘You must be more sparing with your respect. Don’t tease a poor girl so.’ Her voice is hoarse, playful, her eyes dark with kaajal and sleeplessness.

‘Why?’ he asks. ‘Why do you put him through this?’

‘He puts himself through it,’ she says with pity, but Firoz can see the dark lines under her eyes, the tiredness on her enchanting face.

‘You miss him too,’ he realises aloud. A parrot screeches somewhere in the house, startling him.

‘You must go now, Khan Sahb.’ She pushes her thick, heavy hair away from her face, silver tinkling around her wrist.

He nods, gets to his feet. ‘I won’t tell him I was here,’ he promises before he leaves.

The perfumed air of her room clings to him, wisps of its melancholy sweetness clutching at him as he walks down the street and out of her mohalla, the sound of her silver bangles echoing in his thoughts.

\--

When Saeeda Bai begins allowing Maan to see her again, Maan still needs to be guided home on some nights, drunk on love and poetry as much as on alcohol. On some nights, he finds his own way to Firoz, shrugging off the fog from his shoulders and sinking into bed beside Firoz.

Even on such nights, Firoz still can’t say no to Maan when he curls around him, slipping his leg between Firoz’s thighs. Maan smells of sweat and sex and whiskey and Saeeda Bai’s spicy-sweet perfume, the musk of his skin so heady that Firoz drinks it in like a man dying of thirst. He thrusts up against Maan’s thigh until he comes in his pyjama, Maan’s mouth sweet and hot against his own.

‘You’re mine,’ Maan pants into his mouth, not letting him catch his breath. ‘Say it, Firoz, say you’re mine.’ Firoz obeys, breathless, shattered.

He lies awake long after Maan falls asleep on his chest, his soft curls tickling Firoz’s nostrils. Fog curls against the window-glass, smoky and bright in the moonlight.

 

~end~


End file.
